On August 26th, a shooter entered a Dollar General in Jacksonville, FL, and opened fire. By the time the bullets had stopped flying, he had killed three black individuals and himself. Within hours, the local sheriff shared with the public that the killer was racially motivated and had written down his views in a manifesto.
Days after that, that manifesto was leaked, and it did indeed confirm all the priors of a breathless national press that sought to use the shooting as a political bludgeon.
The shooter, in writings reviewed by @RollingStone, also praised Justice Clarence Thomas (“The rare principled conservative”) and Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh. https://t.co/EjK6i3MAqN
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) August 30, 2023
I’m sure the guy who wanted Eminem to be summarily executed is totally in his right mind and accurately represents the views of the Republican Party. Conversely, this was another crazy individual with a variety of incoherent views that weren’t and aren’t shared nor pushed by any actual conservative politicians or figures.
That didn’t stop the press from blaming the broader right, of course. Still, one can’t help but notice how politicized the release of these manifestos and the assigning of motives has become. If it seems like we know the motive of every shooter who can be perceived as right-wing within hours, it’s because we know the motive of every shooter who can be perceived as right-wing within hours.
Meanwhile, left-wing killers (and there are plenty of them), are shuffled off to jail with no follow-up whatsoever. For example, the transgender Nashville shooter who killed six Christians in a hate-filled attack wrote a manifesto. What’s in it? We don’t know because nearly six months later, it still hasn’t been released. The public hasn’t even bee privy to paraphrasing about what it contains.
What names were mentioned in her manifesto? What news sources did she consume? What drove her to commit her attack? We don’t have solid answers on any of that because the press isn’t interested at all. In fact, the only nod towards a motive came early on when local law enforcement let it slip at a news conference that her attack was targeted and not random.
Then there’s the black supremacist who ran over 60-plus people in Waukesha, WI, killing six people, including children. He’s actually gone to trial at this point and been sentenced, and yet no official motive has ever been officially spoken of. No one even asks the question anymore. In fact, prosecutors went on to simply frame it as the killer fleeing from a domestic violence incident in which he took multiple turns to drive specifically toward the parade. Yeah, right.
But with this white supremacist scumbag in Florida, his manifesto and motive are out there and fully fleshed out within days. Don’t tell me that’s just a coincidence. It is obvious that assigning motives to shooters has become overtly politicized to the point where killers are covered for so long as their political views are inconvenient to the mainstream press and the Democratic Party.
We should be given access to at least some reliable description of what the transgender Nashville shooter’s manifesto contained. Likewise, the public should be told what the Waukesha murderer told police when asked why he ran those people over. Information shouldn’t be hidden to soothe partisan wants, and that’s obviously what’s happening here.
